Reference Fuel Development for Non-Aluminum Spent Nuclear Fuel Management

Conference · Tue Jun 10 04:00:00 EDT 2025

OSTI ID:2588609

Scheulen, Shelby M. ^[1]; Sifuentes, Christian A. ^[1]

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1. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), Aiken, SC (United States)

The Savannah River Site (SRS) L Area Facility provides for the safe receipt, storage, handling, and shipping of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and has received more than 47,000 SNF assemblies since 1964. In order to consolidate receipt and storage analysis, L Area criticality safety has historically used several aluminum-clad “reference fuels” to establish bounding storage, handling, and cask loading limits and then applied a reactivity comparison approach to demonstrate that candidate fuels may be processed under the reference fuel limits. Currently, only aluminum-clad SNF from off-site research reactors are transferred on-site. The Accelerated Basin De-Inventory (ABD) program will begin the removal of bundled Non-Aluminum Spent Nuclear Fuel (NASNF) from the L Area disassembly basin for dissolution and disposition, which has driven the need for a non-aluminum reference fuel. This paper discusses the process and results of creating a new fictional homogenous NASNF highly enriched uranium reference fuel, “MITZ,” to be used in nuclear criticality safety evaluations for upcoming SNF disposition operations. Data demonstrating the relationship between neutron multiplication behavior and fuel spacing is generated for the new reference fuel MITZ as well as existing reference fuels representing several types of SNF assemblies.

• Research Organization: SRS
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE; EM
• DOE Contract Number: AC09-08SR22470
• OSTI ID: 2588609
• Report Number(s): SRNS-STI-2025-00227
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

Reference Fuel
Spent Nuclear Fuel